History of the race was clear enough. We have deep history stories about elves and dwarves, but not much about gnomes.

When I say Gnomeregan’s Status, I feel like that was a lot more narrow than what it could have been. What gnomes really want to see is a normal functioning gnome society. All the gnome outposts, including New Tinkertown are places that have been throw together in a hurry by refugees. We want to see what gnomes look like at their best, when they’ve had time to apply themselves and build a stable society.

Gnome adventures means gnome heroes. We need more gnomes that gnome player can comfortably emulate. An example of what a paragon of gnomish-ness looks like when filter through the lens of class, spec, or any profession OTHER THAN engineering. Gnomes that remind us that even though we don’t have a city, we do still fit in on Azeroth.

Gnomes are not superstitious. In a world with arcane magic, divine power, and interdimensional beings, these things are as natural as gravity, magnets, and electricity. Gnomeregan lacks the mythological origin stories that other cultures use to inform themselves who they are. For gnomes <unknown> is a valid answer until some mechanism that explains a phenomenon is demonstrated.

Gnome Philosophy struggles with different questions than other cultures. This is primarily due to the fact gnomes want to understand how things work so that those properties can be harnessed to some effect. Do origins matter? Dwarves are very concerned with their origins, but gnomes are not, because that information does not provide much insight about how things currently function. This peels back a layer and lets us see deeper into gnome philosophy. “How” is a much more important question to gnomes than “Why” is.

Physics, medicine, and chemistry and the very common and well developed schools of thought in Gnomeregan. They are things things that can be measured and applied in the physical world. The tricky things that gnomes grapple with are morality, aesthetics, and the nature of existence. Things that are innately abstract and don’t have obvious immediate application languish on the margins of gnomish disciplines. Their philosophy is less about acquiring wisdom for understanding and more about attaining knowledge to achieve goals.

There is a Micro and Macro aspect to gnome individualism. On the micro level is an individual gnome, made of of all of his or her physical parts, education, experiences, and expertise. All these parts come together to form a complex being that can accomplish amazing feats. Alone a gnome can create amazing things. These creations are then seen as an extension of the self though intellect and craftsmanship.

Every individual gnome is expected to bring their best to any situation. Any job that is necessary is important. This leads into their macro views. Just like each gnome is made of smaller parts themselves, on the macro scale, each gnome is a small piece of a larger community. This is one of the reasons gnomes don’t make many demands of the Alliance. In their expandable views of the self, any success of the Alliance is a success for gnomes as a part of the Alliance.

Gnomish thought-leaders come in all types. Gnomes that take on the roles of priest are not leading fields outside their role, however, they are important sounding boards for all gnomes no matter what the disciple. If a gnome gets too involved in their own personal goals, it’s the job of a gnome philosopher to remind them that they have responsibilities and that their actions have impacts beyond themselves. On the same note, they also guide gnomes that have lost focus and overextend themselves.

When soliciting feedback on ideas it’s also important to get multiple perspectives. There are gnomes that specialize in positive encouragement. Acting as a confidants, these optimists believe that there is a good idea at the core of any concept, and that it must be nurtured to realize it’s maximum potential. Other gnomes are skeptical, asking many questions about how the idea is going to be brought to fruition. It’s not that they are trying to discourage new ideas. Instead they want to make sure that the idea has been considered in depth before resources are spent trying to make it happen. Finally there are nay-saying cynics. Gnomes that offer this kind of feedback tend to focus more on the applications of ideas and the motivations for implementing them more than the feasibility of the idea itself.

Gnomeregan credits a lot of it’s strength to the fact that all citizens have a door that is always open, a gnome to talk to about any idea and work through and explore the merits and drawbacks of all potential ideas.

Sicco Thermaplugg marched towards Gelbin Mekkatorque’s office. He carried reports from the field, mostly bad news. There was determination in his walk. He had something new to show Mekkatorque today, not that it would make a difference, but it would be an opening the Mekgineer needed to get the High Tinker to listen.

There was a banging on his door, Mekkatorque sighed. The months of fighting troggs had taken a toll, and he was exhausted. Thermaplugg opened the door without waiting to be invited in, per usual.

“I have the latest numbers.” Thermaplugg dropped a pile of rolled up papers on the desk. “It’s not good news. I did want to talk to you about…” as Sicco spoke Gelbin closed his eyes, ‘Here it comes again‘, he thought, ‘that horror show Sicco had been pushing for months‘, but to his surprize, Sicco’s next words were not what he expected, “…something new.”

The Mekgineer continued, “We haven’t updated the mecha-marine units since the war with the orcs. They didn’t see much action, so there was not much field test data to work with. I call this rig the ‘Gnome Pounder’. This new design gives them sufficient power to outclass the largest troggs we have encountered and is still maneuverable enough to pass through the tunnels easily.”

It was a breath of fresh air for Gelbin. Thermaplugg had always squirmed in his position as the Mekgineer General of the Mecha-Marines. Could this be a sign that Sicco was done with his endless attempts at one upmanship and finally getting down to the business of his position?

Sicco continued pointing at the schematics and explaining, “I had originally wanted to put a canon on it here, but the recoil was too much and I had to go with a pulverizing arm.” Sicco turned to face Mekkatorque with a self satisfied smirk on his face. There was hope in Gelbin’s eyes, exactly what Sicco wanted. “There is just one problem.”

Gelbin felt the brakes clamp down on his enthusiasm. “What’s that?”

Sicco took a deep breath, “We can’t build it.”

“Why not?” Gelbin insisted surprised. His eyes scanned the schematics for something he had missed. “This all seems good Sicco, there is nothing here outside our ability to fabricate…”

“There wouldn’t be, if we had free access to the engineering bay. With the lock down in place there’s no way to get there from here without a fight. We’ve slowed down the troggs, but we’ve also cut ourselves off from our resources.”

The excitement on Mekkatorque’s face began to fade. He knew it was true. Gnomeregan was built it be incredibly easy to transverse, but once the invasion had begun, the lock down protocol had changed all that. It had been designed to keep the citizens sequestered while threats were pushed out of the city. Turning the city into a maze of disjointed rooms and winding passages with ‘defendable’ entrances and exits.

“The engineering bay is in the lowest section of the city.” Sicco stated plainly.

Gelbin turned to look at him with a questioning look on his face that quickly fell into a scowl, ‘here it comes‘ he thought, but this time he was more than just annoyed. “You are not going to strip my bolts with this again, are you!? I can’t agree to that atrocity you’ve been planning. Did you draw up these plans JUST to get me to listen to THIS again!?” Frustration bubbled up out of Mekkatorque’s voice.

Sicco had counted on getting Mekkatorque riled up, but now to see Gelbin like this it occurred to him that he had never seen the High Tinker like this before. It was a touch fascinating and terrifying. He really had know idea what this gnome, famous for his cool head and reliability, would do next. Thermaplugg pushed forward.

“How many gnomes have to die for you Mekkatorque?” Sicco pointed at the reports he had brought in. “You’ve seen the same numbers I have. This is getting worse, not better. We used the old kobold shield wall strategies and they failed, because the troggs are too strong. We used the tanks we built for pushing back the trolls and THEY failed, because they were too big to function under the surface. We are learning, but not fast enough. This isn’t a lab, we don;t have time for experimentation. The consequences are real!”

Mekkatorque began to crack, “Do you think I don’t see that? I know each time we are forced to change strategies we lose more ground…”

“And we lose more gnomes! Yet you refused to evacuate the city.” Thermaplugg shot back, “Now we have gnomes trapped behind enemy lines. At our current rate of iteration and development, how many more failures before we get the upper hand? How many gnome lives are spent while you sit around trying to figure something out?”

Mekkatorque rebuffed, “Every gnome I send out there has a fighting chance of coming home. If we do what you suggest, their blood will be on our hands, MY hands. Blast it, even the troggs don’t deserve the a cruel death you have concocted. It’s not a defense, it’s an extermination.”

“You’re worried about the well being of the troggs now!?” Sicco recoiled.

“That’s not what I mean and you know it Sicco.” Gelbin said with a sober tone.

It was true, but Sicco pressed the point anyway, “Ten percent.”

Gelbin finally replied after a pause, “Ten percent what?”

“Casualties to the gnome martial service under my plan. You may say that those lives would be on your hands if you do this, but I’ve seen these numbers.” Sicco picked up one of the scrolls of the table. “You’re looking at twice, maybe triple that from any of these alternate solutions. THOSE are the gnomes whose blood you need to think about. Gnomes who in the end could be ALIVE because of the decision you make. Face reality Gelbin. These aren’t our old enemies, kobolds, trolls, even orcs. These creatures don’t want our resources. They are frenzied killing machines. They will not stop until we are wiped out. We can’t drive them back into the tunnels they can from and seal them up, we have to eradicate them before they eradicate us.”

Sicco watched Gelbin silently for a long time. His face was unreadable. Sicco’s heart was racing, sure this was his last chance to present this idea and keep his position as Mekkatorque’s advisor.

“Bring me the plans and formulas for the irradiator.” Gelbin finally said; his tone betrayed no emotion. “And start setting up what you need. Once I give the final approval I want it ready to go.” He turned to look away from Sicco, “Time wasted is lives lost.”

“Right away, Sir.” Sicco surprised himself, he never called Mekkatorque Sir, not in all the years they had worked together had he done so. “Most of it is already set-up. My mephitichemists have been collecting the materials and brewing the fuel. We just need to cut into the main…” Gelbin held up a hand to stop Sicco.

“Just… bring me the plans and put the devices in place. You are dismissed.”

Sicco quickly hurried to the door, but paused at the threshold. His face somber he turned back towards the High Tinker, “Gelbin. I know this was hard for you. It’s the best thing for Gnomeregan. We are going to save a lot of lives.” Mekkatorque kept his back towards him.

Thermaplugg stepped out of the room. Once he heard the door close, his face pinched in to an insidious smile as he hurried down the hall. He had done it. Despite always being one step behind Mekkatorque, he was finally going to get his way.

Most gnomes don’t think much about the afterlife. Attempts to contact and study those that have passed on generally yields inconclusive results, with one exception: Ghosts.

Ghost are real, as is the shadowlands. They can be interacted with and examined through sciomancy. At one time this lead to the formation of a group of gnomes who believed becoming a ghost was the only hope of an afterlife. (If not the ONLY hope, at least it was preferable to reintegration with the environment or oblivion.) These gnomes became Sciomancers of the highest caliber. Able to contact and control the spirits of the dead, and even enter the shadowlands.

While Gnomeregan had no official laws against Necromancy or Shadow magic at the time, the group was still looked down upon and outcast. Most of these Scimomancers went north to Lordaeron to study at the school that became Scholomance, and were lost to the scourge.

Because gnome lore in World of Warcraft is… light. There is a lot of room for head canon. When coming up with my head canon I try to look back at what is there and infer as much as possible for the source material before I start creating things from whole cloth. What can be inferred about gnomes from Warcraft 2 lore and game mechanics?

There are two gnome units and one gnome building in Warcraft 2, the Gnomish Flying Machine, the Gnomish Submarine and the Gnomish Inventor. The first to become available is the Gnomish Flying Machine. It’s built at the Gnomish Inventor building. The submarine is built at the shipyard, just like all Alliance boats, but requires the Gnomish Inventor to be present.

When World of Warcraft launched in 2004 there were really only 2 gnome characters of any note, Mekkatorque and Thermaplugg. It’s suggested in the lore that Mekkatorque has been High Tinker since before the Second War. Therefore I feel like it’s safe to assume that he lead the gnomish forces in that conflict, making Gelbin Mekkatorque THE Gnomish Inventor.

We see in concept art for Heroes of the Storm that Mekkatorque is a pilot of a Gnomish Flying machine. This makes sense, his most famous inventions are forms of transportation, the Mechanostrider and the Deeprun Tram. So his role as a pilot would not contradict anything we see him do in game. It is further supported more by the suit of power armor he pilots on the Broken Shore in Legion. Mekkatorque seems as comfortable behind a control panel as he does with a melee weapon.

If we assume that Mekkatorque lead the Gnomish Air Force during the Second war, I think it’s safe to assume that Thermaplugg was Admiral of the Gnomish Navy. Thermaplugg would not have been on the same level as Mekkatorque. He would have been under the command of Grand Admiral Proudmoore from Kil Tiras. The lore descriptions of how the subs were used in Warcraft 2 imply that the gnome submarines were under Proudmoore’s command.

I would love to see a remastered Warcraft 2 RTS that featured Mekkatorque as a hero Flying Machine unit, and Thermaplugg as a hero Submarine unit.

If we look further at the game mechanics to give lore hints, we find something else. There are two dwarven units in the game too. The Gryphon Rider, which is a Wildhammer dwarf, and the Demolishion Squad, from underground Kaz’Modan. The thing is, the Dwarves of Ironforge are the second unit you get from the Gnomish Inventor.

I think that while the Wildhammers were going all in with the Alliance Forces, Ironforge was holding back, and the Ironforge dwarves that did participate were under the command of Mekkatorque.

Wildhammers are said in the lore to be separate and distrusting of the other dwarves. They even have their own building for their unit. But the Ironforge dwarves come from the Gnomish Inventor. It supports the idea of the strained relationship between Wildhammers and Bronzebeards.

If Ironforge feels about the same way towards Wildhammers as Wildhammers feel about them. I could see Magni not wanting to commit to the Alliance fully because the Wildhammers were featuring such a predominate role in it’s formation. Is it really a stretch to think that Magni would want to keep the Wildhammers, and by extension the Alliance, at arms length? Here is this large organization forming, that includes both friendly trading partners and old rivals. He can’t snub them by refusing to join, and the threat too Azeroth as a whole is large to be ignored. So rather than put Ironforge dwarves at risk of having to take orders from Wildhammers, he asks Mekkatorque to take the role leading Ironforge and Gnomeregan’s combined forces. That way he can send aids to his allies, and defend Azeroth, without having to buddy up to the Wildhammers.

All that political and military entanglement of Ironforge and Gnomeregan could lead to Gnomeregan catching the attention of the Dark Irons… but that’s a path we can go down later.

I have not had a chance to read Chronicles Volume 2 yet, but from what I have heard there is not a lot of development of either Gnomeregan or Ironforge from the Warcraft 2 era. I really wish that some distance would be put between the Gnomes and Dwarves in Warcraft. They can be friends with being shoehorned in to the same niche in the lore. At this point they remain inexorably tied to one another. I hope that they will continue to work on making each more unique by diversifying their kits in different directions.

First I am going to assume he is a class that players can be (and therefore, not a Tinker). Two things narrow down the class list right away. Clearly Mekkatorque wears plate, and his eyes do not glow blue, which leaves us with Warrior and Paladin.

Mekkatorque fights with a one handed mace, and shield. That fact would seem to run counter to Arms and Fury Warriors, and Holy and Retribution Paladins.

So he must protection spec’ed, either as a Warrior or Paladin.

Player gnomes can not be paladins, but NPCs seem to be able to skirt class restrictions. Lets call the fact that PC gnomes can’t be Paladins +1 for Warrior, and -1 for Paladin.

The Freethinker’s Plate Gelbin wears, and mace he wields give a bonus’ to intellect. In fact most armor from engineering or with armors that features moving gears on it gives intellect, like the Timepiece of the Bronze Flight. That’s +1 for Paladin. In addition to that maces are a part of the paladin kit. Gnomeregan has an ‘official’ sword in the Gnomeregan Bone Chopper. Many gnome NPC’s in New Tinkertown use it, but not Mekkatorque, +1/2 for paladin.

Mekkatorque also shoots lasers! Mekkatorque Ray is a beam of light that he shoots at Crushcog. The visual on Mekkatorque Missile is also a large flash of light. His third non-melee attack is a Goblin Dragon Gun, which come from engineering and not a class. Light based attacks +1 paladin.

Mekkatorque is always jolly. He laughs a lot! We never see any RAGE from him. -1 Warrior.

That brings the score to Warrior 0, Paladin 1.5

But math is boring and non-descriptiveness, so lets look at Mekkatorque’s story and see what we can find. My theory is that Mekkatorque has been either a Warrior or Tinker since the launch of the game. It fit with the gnome kit at the time, and there was not a lot of development for gnomes in Vanilla beyond The Grand Betrayal.

You receive an artifact of great power from a Naaru that you bring to Mekkatoque. Mekkatorque takes the concentrated light from you to make an artifact to destroy the undead. This is very similar to how the Ashbringer was made by Magni Bronzebeard. Magni was not a paladin, but he also did not use the Ashbringer, he gave it to a Paladin.

But does Gelbin give what he has created to the player to wield? No. He KEEPS it. I think that Gelbin Mekkatorque when presented with the raw power of Light directly from a Naaru, took that power and he kept it, used it create the mace he now carries (Which has a light bulb on top) and began transitioning to be a Paladin. It is at the END of the Lich King expansion (Patch 3.3) that Gelbin puts on his full set of Intellect plate and start wielding this new weapon.

My conclusion is that Gelbin Mekkatorque did not start as a Paladin, but that he is one now, and he is waiting until he is comfortable in his master of these powers before he begins to teach other gnomes this new discipline.

“The Friction Devotion” is a small cult started by a gnome rogue turned priest named Dinomoda Skipssmas. She taught that existence is a struggle of friction and viscosity: too much and everything grinds to a halt, too little and everything falls apart. The light is an expression of heat, stasis, and order, while shadow is contraction, flow, and freedom.

The group quickly found a niche focusing on reducing friction, because so many gnome inventions are built around wheels and parts with a fixed point of rotation. Early on they developed new formulas for shadow oils, and a HEAT Power Word that would stop machines that started running out of control. Unfortunately the shadow oils did not prove to be cost effective for there intended purposes, and inventors were unhappy with the results of using the HEAT Power Word on their devices because it frequently warped, melted, or fused parts. One inventor was quoted to say that it would have been better if they had “..smashed the whole thing with hammer, at least I’d have some salvageable scraps!”

The group experienced a schism after one of their high ranking member, Faxflex Clutchwydth, purportedly produced a mathematical formula showing that their ultimate goal, to produce a friction-less substance, was impossible. The teachings of Dinomoda Skipssmas were updated by her followers to suggest that finding something perfectly friction-less was an ideal and not meant to be taken as a literal goal. Despite this update, there is still a small fundamentalist group working toward this ‘idealistic’ goal.

The majority of Friction Devotion members that remain continue to search for more efficient lubricants, and their configurations for braking systems are still taught in every level of gnomish schools.